May 24th, 2007

Filed under:
Malta, PR and Marketing, Travel
6 Comments »

Two Peculiar Travel Business Decisions

Two small marketing observations I made recently:

Wired Temples pointed me at this new, slightly dodgy travel site called ParadiseMalta.com.

Their slogan is “are you just a tourist or a traveler?” And yet when you visit the site, check out the photograph they’re using in their main banner:

That's Not Paradise to Me

Gah. Yeah, that beach isn’t busy. No self-respecting ‘traveller’ (that looks like an interesting article) would consider that “paradise”. Marketing lesson: your talk must match your walk.

The second one just kind of amused me. We asked for a referral to a travel agent here in Gozo. We don’t normally use them, but we’re trying to optimize a short trip to Morocco, and had some questions. We got a reference to a local company called “Links Travel”. Is there a harder name to find in Google? Who knows, maybe they were founded before the Internet. If so, it’s time to consider a rebranding.

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Comments: 6 Responses so far

jd
May 24th, 2007
8:43 am

it’s possible that they know their own market better than you do, darren. so, it could be the case that they’re selling to people who hate the word tourist but (secretly) like to do all the touristy things, like hang out on beaches with a lot of other people and stay at hotels where they can get the same food they have back home.

the website might be following a different (more important?) rule of marketing: know your market.

[Reply]

darren
May 24th, 2007
11:01 am

JD: It could be, but if that were the case I’d just have avoided both words (tourist and traveller) altogether, so as to not offend anybody.

That’s not a good option, of course, from a marketing perspective, because it’s usually a good idea to narrow the field.

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Jacques Rene Zammit
May 24th, 2007
11:44 am

A good travel agent is Globalair Travel. It’s in Malta I know but they are very efficient. Their address is San Michel Flats, St George’s Road, St. Julians.

Time for a trip to the big island I guess!

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Lucia
May 24th, 2007
10:47 pm

A decent article on the website you mentioned is:
http://www.paradisemalta.com/mediterranean-best-kept-secret.htm

It was written by Tanja Cilia she’s a Times of Malta columnist, and a good one at that!

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Cat
May 25th, 2007
6:30 am

Hate that whole ‘tourist’ vs ‘traveller’ distinction. We’re all tourists, regardless of where we travel in the world,as the first article notes. Toting a backpack instead of a suitcase doesn’t automatically make you a cooler person; nor does searching for somewhere away from the crowds. Although I have to say, that beach in the picture would be hell on wheels for me!

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MaltaGirl
May 25th, 2007
9:45 pm

My strategy for finding Maltese companies is to look them up in the phone book and then google with their phone number.

(go to maltacom.com, and choose “Directory Enquiries” from the left-hand column. enter your search parameters, and then click on “fixed” to search for land lines, and “mobile” to search for mobile phone numbers)

This strategy didn’t turn up a website for Links Travel, but another website lists their phone number with a referral to “cruise specialists”.

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